Ah, yes! Cell phones!
Let me say up-front that I hate them. In Africa, India, the Himalayas, the Gobi and Sahara Deserts, the jungles of the Amazon and Orinoco basins and the steppes of Asia, even in the Arctic and Antarctic there is some justification for cell phones. In Boston, in Bellingham, in cars there is no justification whatever!
There is a retail chain for which I see ads on television called Car Toys. I believe that the owners, directors and executives of that chain should be jailed and fined a bazillion dollars each just for naming their chain Car Toys. Please let me explain.
Yes, I freely admit that I am a Luddite. I didn't own a PC until 2001. For the most part I avoid instant messaging. I have e-mailed but I have never "texted" a message and hope that, if I ever do, someone will be kind enough to put me out of my misery immediately. Just the usage of "text" as a verb makes my skin crawl. It's as disgusting and awful as "orientate" and "mischievous" when it's mispronounced "mis-CHEE-VEE-us". Just for the record one writes. One does not "text". To give something an orientation one orients it. And the adjective form of "mischief" is correctly pronounced "mis-CHIF-us". Those other usages and pronounciations are as grating as fingernails on a blackboard or, worse, some dunce sitting nearby and talking on a cell phone about something utterly banal and annoying.
I haven't owned an automobile since 1982. In the Boston area it was largely an unnecessary expense. I could get just about anywhere I needed to go on the bus-subway-commuter rail system known as "The T" as short for the MBTA or Metropolitan Boston Transit Authority. While riding "The T" into the age of the cell phone I was forced to listen to the private conversations of private people delivered at a volume that would make Pavarotti envious. On one notable occasion I was stuck on a train out of North Station in Boston seated next to a Yuppie hot-shot who was decked out in the appropriate style complete with cell phone and laptop. He had his laptop open and had brought up some site or other having to do with finance. He called someone ostensibly at a financial organization and was looking for information on his account. He proceeded to speak at full voice, "Hello, Darlene. This is Studley Everprep and I want to talk to you about my investment account. The account number is 'S' as in 'Sam', 'E' as in 'Echo', 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9. I need to make a trade on that account. Can you help me with that? Fine! Yes, I'd like to sell 30 shares of Amalgamated Upscale and buy 80 shares of YupCo Industries. Correct! Yes. Thank you. You can deposit the balance to my account at Usurer's North American Trust. Do you have the account number on file? Yes. Yes, that's correct. Yes, it's 4-3-2-1-9-8-7-6-5. Super, Darlene! Thank you." He then proceeded to call a second broker or whoever and complete a similar transaction. He was about to dial a third time when I turned to him and said, "Do you really want everyone on this train to know that you're Studley Everprep whose investment acount number is SE123456789 and whose bank account number at Usurer's North American Trust is 432198765? Is it really a good idea to give anyone listening the information with which to clean out your bank accounts?"
The initial look of annoyance and exasperation on his face quickly changed to one of paniced horror. He was blessedly quiet for the rest of the time I was on the train though he did cast alarmed glances at me and some of the others around us now and again. He may have had no accounts anywhere and could simply have been faking the call in order to impress some object of his lust sitting nearby but his cowering fear after I interrupted him tend to make me believe that the calls were genuine and any attempt to seduce with money and status was secondary.
The fact is that cell phone users either delude themselves into believing that they are alone or they aren't entirely convinced that the satellite will bounce their call electronically so they are trying to bounce their voice off that geosynchronous relay as a safety measure. They do not seem to care that no one else within earshot, or at least anyone who wishes them well, could not care less that they will be home in 20 minutes, that they are on the bus or that their boy/girlfriend is (choose all that apply):
a) cute
b) sweet
c) hot
d) rockin'
e) a shit
f) sleeping with (make your own list here)
g) going to find out that he/she's got an STD
f) etc.
But the issue that really puts this into the realm of a diatribe entitled "Street Signs" is the issue of DWP, driving while phoning. It needs to be a crime and I mean that in all seriousness. I am not joking or being hyperbolic in the least. Using a cell phone for anything while driving a motor vehicle should be a crime with punishments at least as severe as driving while intoxicated.
In December, 2005 I'd agreed to help a friend of a friend by dressing as Santa Claus and trying to recruit customers to her business. In that capacity, in full Santa costume, I was standing on North State Street in Bellingham waving to passing cars. I hadn't been out on the sidewalk very long when a car came speeding down the street. The woman in the car was talking on a cell phone that she held to her left ear with her left hand. She saw me and waved to me with her right hand as she passed. Now, forgive me for not believing that she was a 3-armed mutant or possessed with prehensile nipples but who in hell was driving that car? Not only was she not driving and not driving safely but she probably should not have been driving at all.
Since then I have nearly been run down by a driver running a red light while pedestrians, including me, were in the crosswalk. She too was talking energetically on a cell phone. I am sure that she was focused completely on the personal issue under discussion but she nearly killed 3 people because she was not focused on controlling a ton or two of speeding metal and glass.
More than a decade ago I heard a report on the radio from a person at some electronics show in Tokyo. The reporter mentioned an object the size of a ballpoint pen. When the button on the top of the device was pressed it jammed all cell phone transmissions and reception within a 3-meter radius. As it happens, owning and using those devices are illegal in the United States. Now I am usually a law-abiding sort but that is one law I would eagerly break daily. I don't just want one of those jamming devices. I need one. A simple, unobtrusive gesture hidden in an inside pocket would free me and all within about 10 feet of me from the obnoxiousness of cell phone users.
It wouldn't make the streets any safer but it would remove some of the annoyance. What we need badly before the death toll mounts is legislation that makes it a criminal felony punishable by jail time and loss of a driver's license to use a cell phone for any purpose other than a paperweight while driving any kind of motor vehicle.
O.k. I'm done now. At least until until the next near miss by a driver with a cell phone to his or her ear.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Street Signs II: Roundabout the rotary club
In Connecticut, where I learned to drive, there are intersections. The intersections have stop signs, traffic lights or some other means of indicating a need for caution by those proceeding through the space. Intersections are pretty straight-forward. You enter one and either turn or don't. It's natural in a sense because you handle them in an automobile just as you would if you were on foot except that you have to be extra cautious because, while some bruiser might jostle you when on foot, it's far less serious than being run into by a ton or two of steel, fiberglass and plastic. In any case, from early childhood we understand intersections.
That, of course, is not to say that intersections don't present some confusion. Even in very ancient times our ancestors recognized that intersections were someplace else. Hangings were customarily carried out at intersections such as crossroads and public squares. Truly scary people such as witches and those likely to become ghouls or vampires were buried at intersections. The object of those uses of intersections was confusion, specifically for the angry ghost or revenant. Those who carried out the hanging didn't want the ghost to have an easy time of finding them. Similarly, the ghoul or vampire might choose the wrong road out of the intersection and end up feeding on the bodies or blood of some folks utterly innocent of the offense that drove the revenant. That's Schadenfreude of a very special level. Also, intersections were seen as someplace else in the sense that they were not entirely one place or entirely another. They were not rightly a part of any place or world or even time. Which puts a rather large exclamation point to the fact that intersections are inherently confusing but still on a level that is familiar and minimally distressing.
In Massachusetts one commonly runs into an exponentially higher degree of confusion because Massachusetts roads frequently substitute a rotary (otherwise known by the Britishism, "roundabout") for the rather straight-forward intersection. In the still rather unhurried times of early car-culture, from the 1920s into the 1950s, rotaries probably made some sense, especially in intersections where more than 2 roads cross. In those days, rotaries had rules just as intersections do. Actually, rotaries still have rules but we seem to be hardwired with the knowledge that they are someplace else and not entirely of this world so, once in one, people drive like homicidal maniacs to whom no rules apply.
When entering a rotary one is supposed to yield to traffic that is already in the rotary. It sounds like a perfectly logical rule until you have to give it a practical application. Let me cite the example of the rotary at the south end of the Lynn Marsh Road in Revere, Massachsetts. It is the intersection of Routes 60 and 107. The rotary probably covers more that an acre and, seen from the point of view of a map, it looks pretty straight-forward: a north-south road in and an east-west road out. Nothing complicated. Except... Not included in that simplified version are the 3 gas stations, 2 restaurants and a motorcycle sales shop that have their access off the rotary. Also not included is the fact that one of those gas stations is also an auto body shop with its own small junk yard (i.e. an automotive recycling facility if you listen to Car Talk on NPR) and that from its parking lot runs a road that ostensibly accesses a couple of houses built on the verge of the marsh but is the primary access for Revere-based mobsters to one of their body dump sites.
Also, the rotary has at least 2 concentric lanes. I say "at least" because the lane dividing lines have long been obliterated. Clearly no highway crew is insane enough to enter that rotary and attempt to repaint the lines. Also, the number of lanes depends on the size and number of cars attempting to assert a right to a lane. I've seen a couple of 1970's Lincoln Continentals and a Datsun (Nissan for you young 'uns) nervously pretending that the rotary contains 3 lanes. Oh, and did I mention that Routes 107 and 60 are truck routes or that there is a large shopping centre less than a mile to the west along Route 60 or that a little farther west Route 60 is the access to Route 1/I-95 going north-south?
Should you have the luck to find an opening in traffic that allows you into this rotary, say from American Legion Highway to the southeast, and wish to proceed across the rotary along Route 60 you might think that simply staying in the outer lane would allow you to negotiate the maneuver easily. You would be completely wrong, but you might assume that if you'd never been there before. So now, with that false assumption planted firmly in some presumedly rational part of your brain you proceed to try it. But you've barely gotten into the intersection when some lunatic pulls out of the gas station/auto body shop on your right almost destroying the passenger side of your car. While you're still flustered from that near-collision a semi, barreling down from the General Electric plant in Lynn just a few miles to the north, not only cuts you off at the merge with Route 107 but forces you into the inner lane. Since the turn out for Route 60 west comes up before the trailer on this truck is fully into the rotary, you're forced to make another circuit. If the rational part of your brain is still even partly functional you probably figure that it's a waste of gas, but not a big deal. Again, that comforting thought is simply wrong, but hold to it because your rationality is going to abandon you very soon and retaining some semblance of rationality for as long as you can is probably good for your long-term survival.
As you complete the circuit of the rotary you may try to get into the outside lane in preparation for getting out onto Route 60 west the next time it comes up. You probably will get out to the right as you pass the southerly entrance to Route 107 but you're likely to be cut off again by drivers who've never gotten over the mania induced in previous encounters with this rotary and who are coming in from the east or north or one of the 2 gas stations. If you do get into the right lane you might notice an AMC Gremlin to your left. It's a beater, a clunker. The paint is largely gone. It's turned a rust-red color. It burns oil. The driver has long, wild, greying hair and a bushy, unkempt beard. If he turns toward you, you might see the wild yet vacant stare and look of terror and madness in his eyes. This isn't a hippie. He's a formerly clean-cut kid who bought the Gremlin, new, decades ago as his first car. Two weeks later he headed for the Revere Drive-in (long gone years ago), got stuck in the rotary and has been there ever since. he is what you might become if your rational brain continues to function.
About your second or third circuit of the rotary, depending on how even-tempered you are by nature, your rational mind will turn off completely. You will become a feral driver for whom there are no traffic laws, for whom no maneuver is too dangerous not even the ones that you know end badly in Steven Segal or Bruce Willis movies. You have become the homicidal maniac I write of. You will force other drivers into guardrails without any pangs of conscience, cut others off in an irrational fury and only thereby will you ever get out of the rotary to the relative calm and safety of Route 60 west. Once there your rational brain may resume functioning but the trauma of the rotary will remain.
All it takes is one such homicidal maniac to infect all who enter the rotary. The first demon-possessed driver in the rotary behaves so badly that all the rest of those in the rotary, regardless of the wisdom and unflappability of the angels that usually guard them, instantly behave like homicidal maniacs too as a means of self-preservation. The rotary thus becomes the homicidal maniac's version of a merry-go-round.
Bellingham, Washington decided that it should have rotaries a couple of years back. Who exactly came up with this plan, I don't know, but obviously there is a homicidal maniac loose in the traffic department. Before you dismiss that suggestion as hyperbole, consider the Bellingham parking division. From all accounts there must have been a secret program that relocated some of the most vicious Nazis to Bellingham after World War II where they found employment in the parking division, an agency in which they have maintained hereditary positions ever since. There is ample though anecdotal proof of that Nazi-relocation program. No, the presence of a homicidal maniac in traffic planning isn't as far-fetched as it sounds.
For the last couple of years Bellingham has taken huge heaps of taxpayers' money, dug holes in Cordata Parkway and dumped it in. They have the paved the location of those monetary sinkholes over in the form of a rotary. Currently there are 2 rotaries, one each at the intersections of Cordata Parkway and Kellogg Road and Westerly Road. Currently they are relatively sedate affairs but a huge subdivision is nearly finished at the north end of Cordata Parkway and every field along the road is either available for or under development. And besides the rotary at Kellogg and Cordata is right next to Whatcom Community College. All the ingredients for a west coast version of the Revere rotary are in place or will be within a few years. All it needs is the yeast of time.
Had the maniac in the Bellingham traffic department troubled to do some research he or she (I'm just being egalitarian and polite. We all know that only a "guy" would think that something as unmitigatedly dumb as a rotary would be a good idea.) would have discovered that Massachusetts has been actively removing rotaries throughout the state since the late 1960s. Rotaries are magnets for collisions and auto fatalities to the extent that there is no question that the rotary is the cause of those problems rather than just the locus. I know that it's really the drivers who cause the accidents but the rotary affords those bad drivers more opportunities for destruction, mayhem and murder. And all this was true in in a world that did not have cell phones to increase the horror geometrically.
The end of this is that in a decade or so Bellingham will have to appropriate more taxpayer money to remove the rotaries that it has installed at great expense. Perhaps this is an intentional plan to provide income to various contributers to some city or county officials, but I prefer to apply Occam's Razor: Do not ascribe to conspiracy what can adequately be explained by simple stupidity...or, in this case a homicidal maniac.
More about cell phones later.
That, of course, is not to say that intersections don't present some confusion. Even in very ancient times our ancestors recognized that intersections were someplace else. Hangings were customarily carried out at intersections such as crossroads and public squares. Truly scary people such as witches and those likely to become ghouls or vampires were buried at intersections. The object of those uses of intersections was confusion, specifically for the angry ghost or revenant. Those who carried out the hanging didn't want the ghost to have an easy time of finding them. Similarly, the ghoul or vampire might choose the wrong road out of the intersection and end up feeding on the bodies or blood of some folks utterly innocent of the offense that drove the revenant. That's Schadenfreude of a very special level. Also, intersections were seen as someplace else in the sense that they were not entirely one place or entirely another. They were not rightly a part of any place or world or even time. Which puts a rather large exclamation point to the fact that intersections are inherently confusing but still on a level that is familiar and minimally distressing.
In Massachusetts one commonly runs into an exponentially higher degree of confusion because Massachusetts roads frequently substitute a rotary (otherwise known by the Britishism, "roundabout") for the rather straight-forward intersection. In the still rather unhurried times of early car-culture, from the 1920s into the 1950s, rotaries probably made some sense, especially in intersections where more than 2 roads cross. In those days, rotaries had rules just as intersections do. Actually, rotaries still have rules but we seem to be hardwired with the knowledge that they are someplace else and not entirely of this world so, once in one, people drive like homicidal maniacs to whom no rules apply.
When entering a rotary one is supposed to yield to traffic that is already in the rotary. It sounds like a perfectly logical rule until you have to give it a practical application. Let me cite the example of the rotary at the south end of the Lynn Marsh Road in Revere, Massachsetts. It is the intersection of Routes 60 and 107. The rotary probably covers more that an acre and, seen from the point of view of a map, it looks pretty straight-forward: a north-south road in and an east-west road out. Nothing complicated. Except... Not included in that simplified version are the 3 gas stations, 2 restaurants and a motorcycle sales shop that have their access off the rotary. Also not included is the fact that one of those gas stations is also an auto body shop with its own small junk yard (i.e. an automotive recycling facility if you listen to Car Talk on NPR) and that from its parking lot runs a road that ostensibly accesses a couple of houses built on the verge of the marsh but is the primary access for Revere-based mobsters to one of their body dump sites.
Also, the rotary has at least 2 concentric lanes. I say "at least" because the lane dividing lines have long been obliterated. Clearly no highway crew is insane enough to enter that rotary and attempt to repaint the lines. Also, the number of lanes depends on the size and number of cars attempting to assert a right to a lane. I've seen a couple of 1970's Lincoln Continentals and a Datsun (Nissan for you young 'uns) nervously pretending that the rotary contains 3 lanes. Oh, and did I mention that Routes 107 and 60 are truck routes or that there is a large shopping centre less than a mile to the west along Route 60 or that a little farther west Route 60 is the access to Route 1/I-95 going north-south?
Should you have the luck to find an opening in traffic that allows you into this rotary, say from American Legion Highway to the southeast, and wish to proceed across the rotary along Route 60 you might think that simply staying in the outer lane would allow you to negotiate the maneuver easily. You would be completely wrong, but you might assume that if you'd never been there before. So now, with that false assumption planted firmly in some presumedly rational part of your brain you proceed to try it. But you've barely gotten into the intersection when some lunatic pulls out of the gas station/auto body shop on your right almost destroying the passenger side of your car. While you're still flustered from that near-collision a semi, barreling down from the General Electric plant in Lynn just a few miles to the north, not only cuts you off at the merge with Route 107 but forces you into the inner lane. Since the turn out for Route 60 west comes up before the trailer on this truck is fully into the rotary, you're forced to make another circuit. If the rational part of your brain is still even partly functional you probably figure that it's a waste of gas, but not a big deal. Again, that comforting thought is simply wrong, but hold to it because your rationality is going to abandon you very soon and retaining some semblance of rationality for as long as you can is probably good for your long-term survival.
As you complete the circuit of the rotary you may try to get into the outside lane in preparation for getting out onto Route 60 west the next time it comes up. You probably will get out to the right as you pass the southerly entrance to Route 107 but you're likely to be cut off again by drivers who've never gotten over the mania induced in previous encounters with this rotary and who are coming in from the east or north or one of the 2 gas stations. If you do get into the right lane you might notice an AMC Gremlin to your left. It's a beater, a clunker. The paint is largely gone. It's turned a rust-red color. It burns oil. The driver has long, wild, greying hair and a bushy, unkempt beard. If he turns toward you, you might see the wild yet vacant stare and look of terror and madness in his eyes. This isn't a hippie. He's a formerly clean-cut kid who bought the Gremlin, new, decades ago as his first car. Two weeks later he headed for the Revere Drive-in (long gone years ago), got stuck in the rotary and has been there ever since. he is what you might become if your rational brain continues to function.
About your second or third circuit of the rotary, depending on how even-tempered you are by nature, your rational mind will turn off completely. You will become a feral driver for whom there are no traffic laws, for whom no maneuver is too dangerous not even the ones that you know end badly in Steven Segal or Bruce Willis movies. You have become the homicidal maniac I write of. You will force other drivers into guardrails without any pangs of conscience, cut others off in an irrational fury and only thereby will you ever get out of the rotary to the relative calm and safety of Route 60 west. Once there your rational brain may resume functioning but the trauma of the rotary will remain.
All it takes is one such homicidal maniac to infect all who enter the rotary. The first demon-possessed driver in the rotary behaves so badly that all the rest of those in the rotary, regardless of the wisdom and unflappability of the angels that usually guard them, instantly behave like homicidal maniacs too as a means of self-preservation. The rotary thus becomes the homicidal maniac's version of a merry-go-round.
Bellingham, Washington decided that it should have rotaries a couple of years back. Who exactly came up with this plan, I don't know, but obviously there is a homicidal maniac loose in the traffic department. Before you dismiss that suggestion as hyperbole, consider the Bellingham parking division. From all accounts there must have been a secret program that relocated some of the most vicious Nazis to Bellingham after World War II where they found employment in the parking division, an agency in which they have maintained hereditary positions ever since. There is ample though anecdotal proof of that Nazi-relocation program. No, the presence of a homicidal maniac in traffic planning isn't as far-fetched as it sounds.
For the last couple of years Bellingham has taken huge heaps of taxpayers' money, dug holes in Cordata Parkway and dumped it in. They have the paved the location of those monetary sinkholes over in the form of a rotary. Currently there are 2 rotaries, one each at the intersections of Cordata Parkway and Kellogg Road and Westerly Road. Currently they are relatively sedate affairs but a huge subdivision is nearly finished at the north end of Cordata Parkway and every field along the road is either available for or under development. And besides the rotary at Kellogg and Cordata is right next to Whatcom Community College. All the ingredients for a west coast version of the Revere rotary are in place or will be within a few years. All it needs is the yeast of time.
Had the maniac in the Bellingham traffic department troubled to do some research he or she (I'm just being egalitarian and polite. We all know that only a "guy" would think that something as unmitigatedly dumb as a rotary would be a good idea.) would have discovered that Massachusetts has been actively removing rotaries throughout the state since the late 1960s. Rotaries are magnets for collisions and auto fatalities to the extent that there is no question that the rotary is the cause of those problems rather than just the locus. I know that it's really the drivers who cause the accidents but the rotary affords those bad drivers more opportunities for destruction, mayhem and murder. And all this was true in in a world that did not have cell phones to increase the horror geometrically.
The end of this is that in a decade or so Bellingham will have to appropriate more taxpayer money to remove the rotaries that it has installed at great expense. Perhaps this is an intentional plan to provide income to various contributers to some city or county officials, but I prefer to apply Occam's Razor: Do not ascribe to conspiracy what can adequately be explained by simple stupidity...or, in this case a homicidal maniac.
More about cell phones later.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Nomenclature: And so was the turnpike from S'tockb-ridge to Bahstan
A word if I might about my name.
Bahstan is small republic in the distant east in which I spent many years. From 1990 through 2006 it was ruled by a succession of petty despots from an hereditary oligarchy most of whom came from neighboring republics. They obtained control through traitorous bargains that secured the collusion of an indigenous warlord of the region of Ma t'pan, T'omassa fin' Iran. At the beginning of 2007 democracy returned to Bahstan but the looting conducted during the 16 years of despotic rule have left the country poor and in serious difficulties when it comes to redressing the many grievances that the oligarchs have left behind.
In fact, the last Bahstan oligarch, the particularly slippery chameleon, M' tromnie bin Ute, is now attempting to take power in the wider region though the dangerous cult from which he draws his influence may drag him down more than support him. We can only hope. The popular credit of the party of the oligarchic plutocracy in the land is at historic lows because its outrageous excesses have brought that party into well deserved ill repute. That disgrace may protect the broader society from bin Ute and the horde of power-mad fellow despots and petty warlords vying with him for supremacy. We can take little comfort, however, in the fact that bin Ute is second to the even more odious Giul 'yani, former ruler of an especially violent and criminal police state.
In any case, you now have a primer on the origins of my name. I bear it proudly in the hope that the return of democracy can return Bahstan to its former glory that even the unintelligible local satrap, Me-nino, cannot dim.
Bahstan is small republic in the distant east in which I spent many years. From 1990 through 2006 it was ruled by a succession of petty despots from an hereditary oligarchy most of whom came from neighboring republics. They obtained control through traitorous bargains that secured the collusion of an indigenous warlord of the region of Ma t'pan, T'omassa fin' Iran. At the beginning of 2007 democracy returned to Bahstan but the looting conducted during the 16 years of despotic rule have left the country poor and in serious difficulties when it comes to redressing the many grievances that the oligarchs have left behind.
In fact, the last Bahstan oligarch, the particularly slippery chameleon, M' tromnie bin Ute, is now attempting to take power in the wider region though the dangerous cult from which he draws his influence may drag him down more than support him. We can only hope. The popular credit of the party of the oligarchic plutocracy in the land is at historic lows because its outrageous excesses have brought that party into well deserved ill repute. That disgrace may protect the broader society from bin Ute and the horde of power-mad fellow despots and petty warlords vying with him for supremacy. We can take little comfort, however, in the fact that bin Ute is second to the even more odious Giul 'yani, former ruler of an especially violent and criminal police state.
In any case, you now have a primer on the origins of my name. I bear it proudly in the hope that the return of democracy can return Bahstan to its former glory that even the unintelligible local satrap, Me-nino, cannot dim.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Street Signs I: Some of the differences in getting around.
Boston is known for crazy traffic and crazy drivers but some of that is a function of the way that Boston particularly and Massachusetts more broadly deal with traffic controls. Famously Massachusetts is the state in which Stop signs and Red Lights are optional, so they say. No one who's driven there and survived will contradict that statement either.
I first moved to Massachusetts from Connecticut in June, 1978. Connecticut had had a "right turn on red" law for several years at that point. I moved to Lynn, Massachusetts and assumed that Massachusetts was similarly enlightened. From the behavior of my fellow drivers, I saw nothing to challenge my assumption. In fact, I might have been persuaded that Massachusetts had gone one better and instituted a "left turn on red law". However, in September, 1978 I read newspaper accounts of how Massachusetts needed to pass a "right turn on red" law or lose a lot of Federal Transportation Funds. The Great and General Court (i.e. Legislature) duly passed such a law so that the Commonwealth could receive its share of Federal Funds. But the story didn't end there.
You see, the primary reason that Massachusetts hadn't a "right turn on red" law was that the Registrar of Motor Vehicles was then a Reserve General, Richard E. McLaughlin. He insisted on being referred to as "General" in his civilian capacity and, as happens fairly often in Massachusetts and probably elsewhere, he'd built up a little fiefdom at the Registry along with some personal power and influence. The General did not like "right turn on red" laws. General McLaughlin was a "conservative" in the sense that term applies to the current Administration and the U.S. Republican Party which is to say, neo-fascist. He was not going to let so petty a thing as a law, even when backed by empirical evidence that the situation mandated in the law was a major improvement on the status quo in every measurable way, get in the way of something that he knew. Thus, having procured the additional Federal Transportation Funds, the General put a sizeable chunk of that money to use by making and posting at literally every intersection in Massachusetts signs that read, "NO TURN ON RED". Law and science were discarded for General McLaughlin's faith.
So what has that got to do with Bellingham? Specifically, nothing at all. In spirit though it has a great deal to do with my new home.
One of the reasons that driving in Massachusetts and especially in Boston is so dangerous is that, unless you know where you're going, you can't get there. Yes, I know that's sort of an old New England joke, but in the Boston area, it's literally true. Things may be changing in this day of On-Star and other GPS direction systems but I rather doubt it. You see, Massachusetts does not believe in street signs much. It is possible to drive for quite a way through Boston and its suburbs, to get quite far west, south or north and out of those suburbs altogether without seeing a street sign.
No, that's an exaggeration. You will see street signs that tell you over and over the name of the street you're on but if you're looking for an address on a side street with only street names to guide you, don't even leave you home. You can't get there from wherever your starting point may be. Vainly you will search for an indication of the name of the side street. There just isn't a sign and that despite long-standing legislation that such signs must be posted. Or, in the rare event that you should find a sign identifying the name of a side street, you may still be lost. I vividly remember standing at a bus stop on Blue Hill Avenue opposite Franklin Park and noticing the street sign for the side street next to my bus stop. The sign was 2-sided with the street name on black on a white background on each side. The street name was spelled differently on each side.
In Bellingham things are far more civilized. The streets, main and side, are clearly marked. The names appear on large, visible and legible signs placed for optimum notice by drivers. The street names are spelled correctly too. But this coast has its own insanities. In Bellingham it involves street names. Takes James Street for example. It leaves downtown Bellingham running roughly parallel to and just west of Interstate Route 5 until it intersects with Sunset Drive. At the intersection with James if you make a right onto Sunset you're heading toward the Sunset Shopping Centre. You cross over I-5 and if you turn left at the second light you are entering the shopping centre parking lot. But, if you make another left just before entering the parking area in front of the Round Table Pizza chain store you are now on a street parallel to Sunset driving back in the direction you just came from. You are also on James Street again. To be fair, James does curve to the right and resume being a north-south street on the west side of the shopping centre though on the east side of I-5 now, but the point is that the street is not contiguous at all.
As I've said before, Bellingham's official history isn't anywhere near as long as that of Boston or Salem, Massachusetts but it must have had someone at some point in its past who deserved to have a street named for him or her. Or perhaps there was a large farm in one family for generations that could have given its name to that northerly portion of James Street after the shopping centre.
I have some friends here in Bellingham whose official address is on East Maryland Street despite the fact that there is no East Maryland Street where they live and never has been. Even odder, the street onto which their driveway opens does not have a name. Even if it did, that name would not be East Maryland Street because were East Maryland Street to suddenly return from the parallel dimension in which it may currently exist, it would be on the opposite side of their house.
When the county Transportation Authority here tests prospective bus drivers it gives them a series of street addresses to find in a street map book. The trick question involves an address on a major street but on a section of that street that is separated from the main course of that street by 2 or 3 miles. On the whole, many streets here are not a lot easier to find than those on the Massachusetts less-than-magical mystery tour.
Or take Bellevue, Washington, an eastern suburb of Seattle. A friend of a friend lives there and we used to visit every few months in 2003-2004. He lives in a hillside subdivision. To get to a house there you might travel up Southeast 46th Street and turn onto Southeast 46th Street Way off of which is Southeast 46th Street Court which branches into Southeast 46th Street Court Way (and parallels Southeast 46th Street Court Drive) to get to Southeast 46th Street Court Lane. For a part of the country noted for invention and innovation those qualities are notably lacking in city planners.
On the other hand if some sane person in government were to legislate an end to such madness by requiring some logic to street names and names to change when the streets are not contiguous, there would undoubtedly be an initiative petition and a hue and cry over traditions and rights that could bring down governments because the attitude both here and in Massachusetts is that what we do may be insane but that's how we do it and we're damned well going to do it that way regardless of how little sense it makes.
I first moved to Massachusetts from Connecticut in June, 1978. Connecticut had had a "right turn on red" law for several years at that point. I moved to Lynn, Massachusetts and assumed that Massachusetts was similarly enlightened. From the behavior of my fellow drivers, I saw nothing to challenge my assumption. In fact, I might have been persuaded that Massachusetts had gone one better and instituted a "left turn on red law". However, in September, 1978 I read newspaper accounts of how Massachusetts needed to pass a "right turn on red" law or lose a lot of Federal Transportation Funds. The Great and General Court (i.e. Legislature) duly passed such a law so that the Commonwealth could receive its share of Federal Funds. But the story didn't end there.
You see, the primary reason that Massachusetts hadn't a "right turn on red" law was that the Registrar of Motor Vehicles was then a Reserve General, Richard E. McLaughlin. He insisted on being referred to as "General" in his civilian capacity and, as happens fairly often in Massachusetts and probably elsewhere, he'd built up a little fiefdom at the Registry along with some personal power and influence. The General did not like "right turn on red" laws. General McLaughlin was a "conservative" in the sense that term applies to the current Administration and the U.S. Republican Party which is to say, neo-fascist. He was not going to let so petty a thing as a law, even when backed by empirical evidence that the situation mandated in the law was a major improvement on the status quo in every measurable way, get in the way of something that he knew. Thus, having procured the additional Federal Transportation Funds, the General put a sizeable chunk of that money to use by making and posting at literally every intersection in Massachusetts signs that read, "NO TURN ON RED". Law and science were discarded for General McLaughlin's faith.
So what has that got to do with Bellingham? Specifically, nothing at all. In spirit though it has a great deal to do with my new home.
One of the reasons that driving in Massachusetts and especially in Boston is so dangerous is that, unless you know where you're going, you can't get there. Yes, I know that's sort of an old New England joke, but in the Boston area, it's literally true. Things may be changing in this day of On-Star and other GPS direction systems but I rather doubt it. You see, Massachusetts does not believe in street signs much. It is possible to drive for quite a way through Boston and its suburbs, to get quite far west, south or north and out of those suburbs altogether without seeing a street sign.
No, that's an exaggeration. You will see street signs that tell you over and over the name of the street you're on but if you're looking for an address on a side street with only street names to guide you, don't even leave you home. You can't get there from wherever your starting point may be. Vainly you will search for an indication of the name of the side street. There just isn't a sign and that despite long-standing legislation that such signs must be posted. Or, in the rare event that you should find a sign identifying the name of a side street, you may still be lost. I vividly remember standing at a bus stop on Blue Hill Avenue opposite Franklin Park and noticing the street sign for the side street next to my bus stop. The sign was 2-sided with the street name on black on a white background on each side. The street name was spelled differently on each side.
In Bellingham things are far more civilized. The streets, main and side, are clearly marked. The names appear on large, visible and legible signs placed for optimum notice by drivers. The street names are spelled correctly too. But this coast has its own insanities. In Bellingham it involves street names. Takes James Street for example. It leaves downtown Bellingham running roughly parallel to and just west of Interstate Route 5 until it intersects with Sunset Drive. At the intersection with James if you make a right onto Sunset you're heading toward the Sunset Shopping Centre. You cross over I-5 and if you turn left at the second light you are entering the shopping centre parking lot. But, if you make another left just before entering the parking area in front of the Round Table Pizza chain store you are now on a street parallel to Sunset driving back in the direction you just came from. You are also on James Street again. To be fair, James does curve to the right and resume being a north-south street on the west side of the shopping centre though on the east side of I-5 now, but the point is that the street is not contiguous at all.
As I've said before, Bellingham's official history isn't anywhere near as long as that of Boston or Salem, Massachusetts but it must have had someone at some point in its past who deserved to have a street named for him or her. Or perhaps there was a large farm in one family for generations that could have given its name to that northerly portion of James Street after the shopping centre.
I have some friends here in Bellingham whose official address is on East Maryland Street despite the fact that there is no East Maryland Street where they live and never has been. Even odder, the street onto which their driveway opens does not have a name. Even if it did, that name would not be East Maryland Street because were East Maryland Street to suddenly return from the parallel dimension in which it may currently exist, it would be on the opposite side of their house.
When the county Transportation Authority here tests prospective bus drivers it gives them a series of street addresses to find in a street map book. The trick question involves an address on a major street but on a section of that street that is separated from the main course of that street by 2 or 3 miles. On the whole, many streets here are not a lot easier to find than those on the Massachusetts less-than-magical mystery tour.
Or take Bellevue, Washington, an eastern suburb of Seattle. A friend of a friend lives there and we used to visit every few months in 2003-2004. He lives in a hillside subdivision. To get to a house there you might travel up Southeast 46th Street and turn onto Southeast 46th Street Way off of which is Southeast 46th Street Court which branches into Southeast 46th Street Court Way (and parallels Southeast 46th Street Court Drive) to get to Southeast 46th Street Court Lane. For a part of the country noted for invention and innovation those qualities are notably lacking in city planners.
On the other hand if some sane person in government were to legislate an end to such madness by requiring some logic to street names and names to change when the streets are not contiguous, there would undoubtedly be an initiative petition and a hue and cry over traditions and rights that could bring down governments because the attitude both here and in Massachusetts is that what we do may be insane but that's how we do it and we're damned well going to do it that way regardless of how little sense it makes.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Way Out West: Initial Observations
The first thing that's apparent is that the water is on the wrong side. I'm a New Englander. Boy, am I a New Englander! Some of my maternal ancestors came over on the Mayflower in 1620. They spread out to Maine and later to Connecticut where I was born, but for nearly 500 years we've been New Englanders. That's why the ocean here is in the wrong place. In the natural order of things west is inland and east is toward the ocean if not in it already. Yet, though I've lived in Bellingham, Washington for 4 years now, the ocean is still, definitely on the wrong side.
Also, in New England there are no active volcanoes. Here I live in the shadow of Mt. Baker. It's beautiful. It's impressive. It could erupt and wipe out this city and everyone in it, kind of like Pompeii. That's different too.
Before moving here I spent most of the last 25 years in Salem, Massachusetts. Yes, it's the Salem of the 1691 Witch Trials and home to quite a number of firsts in this country. On my way to the train that took me to work in Boston I regularly passed a half dozen or more houses built before 1700. You don't hardly find that here. To be sure, the Native American history of Bellingham extends back centuries before my illegal immigrant ancestors came ashore at the place on the Massachusetts coast they called Plymouth. But a lot of that history has been obliterated by later in-migration and the rest tends to be guarded as the proprietary information of the present tribes. That heritage is certainly the property of the peoples whose ancestors lived it. Sharing some of it more freely would help promote more general understanding, I think. Yet I understand the need to horde resources toward rebuilding a culture that my ancestors spent nearly 500 years trying to obliterate.
The history of European settlement does get back into the 18th Century but the parts that are that old tend to be shrouded in mystery for the average person. The official memory here extends back about 125 years. In 2004 the City of Bellingham celebrated its 100th Anniversary. Salem was 100 years old when George Washington was having his 4th birthday. That's different too.
Apart from the historical and geographical differences I have to say that this is unquestionably the most beautiful place in which I've ever lived. The beauty of the natural setting is just breathtaking. I've long believed that poetry only happens near the sea or in mountains. With both in close proximity there is no end to the poetry of and inspired by this place.
That's enough for now. I'll write more about the contrasts later.
Also, in New England there are no active volcanoes. Here I live in the shadow of Mt. Baker. It's beautiful. It's impressive. It could erupt and wipe out this city and everyone in it, kind of like Pompeii. That's different too.
Before moving here I spent most of the last 25 years in Salem, Massachusetts. Yes, it's the Salem of the 1691 Witch Trials and home to quite a number of firsts in this country. On my way to the train that took me to work in Boston I regularly passed a half dozen or more houses built before 1700. You don't hardly find that here. To be sure, the Native American history of Bellingham extends back centuries before my illegal immigrant ancestors came ashore at the place on the Massachusetts coast they called Plymouth. But a lot of that history has been obliterated by later in-migration and the rest tends to be guarded as the proprietary information of the present tribes. That heritage is certainly the property of the peoples whose ancestors lived it. Sharing some of it more freely would help promote more general understanding, I think. Yet I understand the need to horde resources toward rebuilding a culture that my ancestors spent nearly 500 years trying to obliterate.
The history of European settlement does get back into the 18th Century but the parts that are that old tend to be shrouded in mystery for the average person. The official memory here extends back about 125 years. In 2004 the City of Bellingham celebrated its 100th Anniversary. Salem was 100 years old when George Washington was having his 4th birthday. That's different too.
Apart from the historical and geographical differences I have to say that this is unquestionably the most beautiful place in which I've ever lived. The beauty of the natural setting is just breathtaking. I've long believed that poetry only happens near the sea or in mountains. With both in close proximity there is no end to the poetry of and inspired by this place.
That's enough for now. I'll write more about the contrasts later.
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